That's really impressive! 😎 I've been in lower orbits in Orbiter, but of course I had a couple of MFDs to guide me. I know how hard it is to do what you've done. I won't be entering this, however, because I'm stuck doing interior decorating in that docking bay on Mars High. Seriously, I haven't been flying much lately. Just a little jaunt once in awhile around Mars and its moons when I get stir crazy and have to step outside for a bit. 😉

Figured that some people probably wouldn't know where to start. Here's a practice exercise:

Load my saved game. You'll see that the ship's sights are aligned on the centre of Earth, and that we're at perigee (closest approach). Do not adjust the attitude of the ship, it's right where I left it for orbital manoeuvres. Speed up time, and look out of the back window. When the centre of Earth crosses the sights in rear view, we're at apogee (the highest point of the orbit), at exactly the opposite side of Earth. Look out of the front, and wait once more for perigee.

When at the very moment of perigee, tap the L key briefly. This will slow the ship down, and reduce the energy of the orbit. It will also decircularize it, and the ship will lose altitude. Don't press L too much, or your orbit will intersect the atmosphere, and you'll then crash into the ground. Also, your perigee is now the apogee; this now is as high as your orbit will take you.

Look out the back window as you descend. Now, as the label for Earth passes by the centre of the sights, you're at perigee. Gently tap the J key to slow down again (not too much!). This will start to circularize the orbit once more. Check to see if your height at apogee is close to the height at perigee. If it's still higher, wait until the moment of perigee again and give another quick tap of J. If you start to fall, you can reverse this.

Wait for the moment of apogee or perigee. Burning at other times will change the axis of your orbit, and make things really complicated. Long burns will send you out into space or down onto Earth - the ships in Pioneer are really powerful.

What I''ve just described to you there is a Hohmann transfer, which is actually used in real life to change orbital height. Once you've done it a bit on my saved game, the challenge is lining things up in your own game. Good luck!

what we should do a ancient maneuvre used for stupid chemical fuel burning rockets?

to me that's a bit like,

p1 "i like to learn to drive a car"

p2 "ok, then start with the invention of the wheel"

that was invention of "Raumfahrt"

"go kill those germans, theyre responsible for all this..." 😆

no, it's ok, i'm only in a stupid funny mood today, that's all.

perhaps i will give that a try, sounds like a real job, for real men. 😉

did you do that "from stomach" or do you used a calculation for the orbit?

i don't have to tell you how i would do it, did i?

From the stomach. There are plenty of orbital calculators online, but the next challenge might be about Venus, or some fictional body in another system. My first orbit was around Barnard's Star g (which no longer exists).

As to re-inventing the wheel? There's an autopilot, but one day yours might be damaged. You could reload, but that's... well, sad. Also, the autopilot uses more fuel than is absolutely necessary, and one day (once fuel's implemented!) you might be low on fuel and docking on vapours. Frontier let you speed up time and cheat; Pioneer doesn't cheat that way.

Also, it shows off what the engine can do. If you never plan to actually fly your space ship as a space ship, you might as well be playing Oolite!

I did something of my own flying multi-engined bombers in the IL2 series, taking off, flying around and landing using only propellor pitch and power, without touching the controls. Alas nobody tried it. Maybe because most of the virtual pilots there want to shoot or bomb everything instead of practicing such things.

This is totally different of course. It suits my personality and thus I like the challenge. I used to do it a lot in Frontier 15 years ago.

🙂 I used to do this with X-plane although its probably a lot easier as you can just customise your plane to suit your needs.

I used to enjoy trying for nice orbits with that too, and it has even less navigational aids than Pioneer for that 🙂 I used to calculate the exact speed required at a certain height and just fly to those approximate values.